Brown
by TannerG
Summary: Several years after surviving her trip to Silent Hill, Cheryl Mason begins to suspect that the town may not be through with her.


**Brown**

By: TannerG

The sudden, frantic motion of a dark figure caught her attention. It leapt from the shadows and—with a frenetic blur of brown limbs—wrenched her into the shadows from which it had emerged.

Cheryl Mason woke up screaming and sitting up. As soon as she regained her bearings, she fell silent and clapped her hand to her mouth as if to prevent another scream from escaping her lips. As she heard the soft footsteps pad toward her bedroom door, she closed her eyes and silently cursed herself for waking her daughter up.

"Mommy," Lisa whispered drowsily as she walked up to the bed, climbed onto it, and embraced Cheryl.

"I'm sorry, honey," Cheryl whispered as they both laid back to get back to sleep.

Now that Lisa was with her, Cheryl knew that the nightmare would not disturb her sleep again that night. Lisa never seemed to have bad dreams, or was never troubled by them and never remembered them.

Cheryl dropped Lisa off at preschool and proceeded to the hospital. She had just started her rounds and seen only two patients when her pager began to beep. The numbers of the display meant two things: she was needed in the emergency room and said emergency happened to be her area of expertise—burn trauma.

The patient had third-degree burns covering most of his body. Cheryl had seen terrible burns in medical school, but what she saw on the gurney made her internally shudder. His head had been burned so badly that the skin seemed to have fused over his eyes and his nose had nearly been burned off completely. She did what she could to ensure his survival, but she doubted he would still be alive the next morning. The whole time Cheryl and the nurses tended to him, he uttered no sound. His breathing seemed normal and not labored; his lungs seemed to have somehow remained unharmed. His occasional movements made him appear to be slipping in and out of consciousness. Cheryl administered the usual pain-killers and sedative and then left the patient in the care of the nurses as she continued her rounds. His condition remained stable throughout the day.

The next morning, she found that the patient had been moved to a recovery room during the night. Cheryl entered the patient's room to check on him. To her amazement, she noticed that the burns that had ravaged most of the patient's skin and obscured or obliterated his eyes and nose appeared to have occurred no sooner than a year ago. This mysterious "John Doe" may have received most of his burns as long ago as several years. The only recent burns on his body seemed to be a few isolated first and second degree burns. The patient slept as she examined him.

As she ate lunch in the cafeteria, Cheryl consulted a colleague, Dr. Sam Gordon.

"Sam," she queried, "did you notice anything strange about that charred John Doe that came in yesterday?"

"You see it too, eh?" he replied. "All I know is that yesterday he looked as if he had just been cooked and today he looks as if it happened a few years ago. Well . . . there's also the fact that no one can figure out who he is."

"How could I have missed that?" Cheryl asked aloud. "How could I have not noticed that his burns weren't recent?"

"Everyone missed it," Sam replied, "the nurses, the paramedics, even me." "It doesn't make any sense. It's as if he has some super-accelerated healing ability."

"No," Cheryl added. "If that were the case, his face wouldn't be so . . . lacking. His skin wouldn't be so brown and leathery-looking. I don't know what we're going to tell him when he wakes up. 'You were in a terrible fire either two days ago or two years ago?' I lowered his meds, so he could come-to at any moment."

When Cheryl arrived to pick her daughter up from preschool, the head instructor asked for a moment of her time. They discussed the peculiarities of Lisa's social interactions as Lisa swung on the swing set in the small playground behind the preschool.

"It's probably no cause for alarm," the instructor assured Cheryl, "but she's too serious and reserved for such a young child."

"Is she not getting along with the others?" Cheryl asked.

"Well," the instructor admitted, "she gets along fine with the other children when she actually puts forth the effort to interact with them at all, but she does that rarely on her own initiative." "She usually ignores them, and they've consequently gotten into the habit of ignoring her. She never lets herself have fun with the other children."

"She's always been quiet and aloof," Cheryl revealed. "I try to encourage her to be more . . . social, but I don't want to push her too hard. I was like that when I was her age. My dad used to tell me stories about my childhood; I developed socially a little more slowly than other children. In the end, public school sort of straightened me out. I guess I'm hoping it helps her the same way."

"She's very well behaved," the instructor praised, "and more than a little precocious." "She seems so lonely and restrained sometimes. I simply thought I should let you know what I've observed of her behavior."

"I appreciate that," Cheryl replied, "and I know she's going to have to work at being less introverted." "I just want to ease her into it for the time being."

Lisa got off the swing and walked toward them as if she had somehow been able to sense that the discussion had concluded.

The next morning, Cheryl noticed that the "John Doe" was lying on his side rather than on his back. Something in the room seemed different, but she couldn't quite figure out what had changed.

"Good morning, sir," she called out softly to the sleeping figure. "I wish we could find your name."

The patient did not stir. Cheryl's blank expression blossomed into a mischievous grin.

"How about Mr. Brown?" she asked the inert figure. "What about a first name? John Brown? No, that's still too generic. How about Bernie? That's it: Bernie Brown."

The patient suddenly turned over onto his other side. Cheryl jerked backwards with a startled yelp. If she hadn't known better, it would have appeared to her as if the patient had been born without eyes.

"Sorry," she whispered as she left the room.

That day, Cheryl was unusually busy. She found herself dragged into a double shift and had to call a friend to pick Lisa up from preschool and stay with her until Cheryl got home.

By 11 PM, Cheryl was genuinely exhausted. She had just finished her rounds when she noticed bloody footprints that had been tracked down the hall in the recovery wing. She followed the prints backwards until they led her to the door of the room reserved for the patient she had dubbed "Bernie Brown."

She entered the room to find that the bed was empty. The EKG machine had been unplugged despite the fact that the plug had been bolted to the outlet. It had been forcefully ripped out of the wall. The patient had removed the electrodes from his body, as well as the needles attached to the pain-killer drips.

Cheryl exited the room and followed the footprints forward. The bleeding appeared to have slowed. Instead of full, bloody prints, the prints were only outlined in blood. She followed the gradually fading prints to the stairwell, up the stairs, and into the upper floor of the recovery wing. She noticed a door open beside her. At the same instant, she saw "Bernie Brown" exit a staff restroom at the far end of the hall. He stopped in mid-stride, turned toward Cheryl, and seemed to stare at her with the eyes he didn't have.

Cheryl turned to her side to see a patient she recognized staring in awe at Brown. The patient beside her had been recovering from a combination of pneumonia and heroin addiction.

"You see it too?" the patient asked, never taking her eyes off of Brown. "I thought I was still seeing withdrawal effects."

"He's a patient," Cheryl explained in a whisper. "Go back to sleep. I'll take care of him."

As the door beside her closed, Cheryl swallowed nervously. She slowly approached Brown, who still stood motionless—like a deer staring at headlights. Cheryl had to struggle to keep from trembling. She could not stop thinking about how much the patient before her resembled the quick, brown figure from her nightmares. When she reached him, she haltingly placed a hand on his scrawny shoulder.

"Are you alright?" she asked softly.

He tilted his head slightly but seemed to ignore the question.

"Let's go back to your room," she said as she gently began to lead him by the arm back down the hallway. "What's your name?"

He pushed the sleeve of his hospital gown up to reveal a circular tattoo on his shoulder. Cheryl couldn't make anything out of it, but the design seemed familiar to her.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I can't read that."

When they finally reached Brown's room, he obediently got into bed and sat still while Cheryl began to replace the electrodes on his body. She then remembered that the EKG machine had been unplugged and removed the electrodes. She began to reach for the drip-lines when Brown suddenly grasped her arm in a rigid, steely grip.

"Book," his voice grated as if he had not spoken in days or weeks. It sounded as if several people were speaking and whispering in unison when he spoke.

"You want something to read?" Cheryl asked as she tried to suppress her trembling.

Brown shook his head from side to side in a peculiar, fluid motion.

"Blank," he replied.

"You want something to write in?" Cheryl asked.

Brown released her.

"I'll get it," she said. "Wait here."

She found an empty composition book and an ink pen in the supply room and brought the items to Brown. The absurdity of procuring writing materials for an obviously blind man was not lost on her. Despite this, she somehow knew he would be able to make use of them. As soon as he received the items, Brown quickly scrawled a title on the book's cover, turned to the first page, and became completely absorbed in his writing. He wrote fluidly—unhurried but without pause, as if he had planned the text well before-hand. Cheryl left him to his work.

By the time Cheryl arrived home, she felt numb and drained. She thanked her friend—an old roommate from medical school—for staying with Lisa. As her friend drove off, Cheryl entered Lisa's room to check on her. Lisa sat up and Cheryl noticed that her daughter had been crying.

"What's wrong, sweetie?" Cheryl asked as she sat on Lisa's bed and brushed the girl's hair from her eyes.

"My friend is missing," Lisa whimpered.

"What friend?" Cheryl responded.

"I'm not supposed to tell," Lisa replied.

"You can tell me," Cheryl assured her. "No one will find out—not even your friend."

"Okay," Lisa whispered. "He's the brown man. We would play games and make things, but he never came back this time. I don't know why he won't come back."

"What does he look like?" Cheryl asked, shuddering internally.

"He's brown and kinda skinny," Lisa answered, "and he can see but he has no eyes."


End file.
